


branches waving in the wind

by aerynlallaboso



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-09 16:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3256937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerynlallaboso/pseuds/aerynlallaboso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What's your name, sensei?" Sakura asks.</p><p>Naruto's gaze swivels to stare at him, as does Sasuke's. Their teacher looks a bit unnerved to have three pairs of small eyes fastened on him, but he smiles again and says, "Yamato."</p><p>(the classic 'team seven gets a different sensei and things get wild' AU)</p><p>// discontinued for now //</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. knocking on a stone bridge before crossing it (1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaa so this is a start to an au i've been thinking about for ages.. i'm trying to write arc by arc so the second ch is very almost finished (& will be up asap) but after that updates'll be infrequent but large-ish. . i apologise that this is mostly the usual wave rehash but i'm going off-road for the second arc and v. excited for it
> 
> anyway, enjoy

Naruto won't sit still.

He never sits still, but today he's infuriatingly full of energy, jumping up and down and peering out the door to the passage. Sakura's about to jump up herself and thump him, honestly. Why can't he be more like Sasuke? Sasuke's sitting nicely and silently and cool-ly.

"All the other teams have their senseis already," Naruto grumbles. He's moved from the door to the corner. He kinda looks like he's plotting something, to Sakura's eye.

He's grabbing an eraser. "Hey!! What are you doing, Naruto?!"

Naruto grins at her and pushes a chair over to the door so he can get at the top easier. "That's what you get for being late," he explains to Sakura and their absent sensei as he wedges the eraser in perfect position to drop on the head of the person who opens the door.

"Geez," Sakura says crossly.

"As if a jounin would ever fall for something like that," Sasuke adds from his seat.

The door opens a crack, and all three of the genin tense. Naruto lets loose a tiny giggle which erupts into a belly laugh as the eraser falls straight onto their new sensei-

And promptly screams as a kunai hits the floor inches from his feet.

~

"I'm sorry," their sensei says, rubbing chalk dust from his dirt-brown hair and eyeing Naruto warily. "I was running late because I had to meet with the Hokage this morning - I'm taking over from the person who was originally supposed to teach your team."

"What about the kunai?" Naruto demands. Sakura still thinks he looks kinda scared. She thinks even Sasuke was scared when - no. Sasuke doesn't get scared. He's too cool for that.

Their sensei gives them an awkward smile. "Reflex."

Sasuke nods like he approves.

"Well," the sensei says, sitting back and sounding business-like. "Let's go. Introduce yourselves."

"I'm Naruto Uzumaki, and i'm going to be Ho-"

"I'm Sakura Haruno."

"Hey, Sakura, you didn't let me fini-"

"Sasuke Uchiha."

"Hey! I was gonna say I'm going to be Hokage someday!" Naruto shouts, glaring at them both. "Maybe then the village'll acknowledge me," he adds, and Sakura sees something in their sensei's face shifts when he hears that.

"What's your name, sensei?" she asks.

Naruto's gaze swivels to stare at him, as does Sasuke's. Their teacher looks a bit unnerved to have three pairs of small eyes fastened on him, but he smiles again and says, "Yamato."

"Just Yamato?" Naruto says dubiously.

"Just Yamato," Yamato confirms, fiddling with his forehead protector - though it's more like a face-plate, happuri style and dull silver. "But it's Yamato-sensei to you three."

"Yamato-sensei," Naruto and Sakura chorus at the same time, and Sakura turns swiftly to glare at Naruto. Naruto blushes; Sasuke rolls his eyes and says nothing at the verbal slap-fest brewing beside him.

~

Naruto arrives the next morning to begin training just in time to hear Sakura say something about being glad they have a sensei who seems respectable and will probably be on time and then witness her getting the pants scared off her by said sensei phasing out of the ground beneath their feet.

"Sorry if I scared you," Yamato says.

He looks quite startled when Naruto runs up to him and asks, breathlessly, what kind of technique that was! He's never seen a shinobi use something like that before. Most of the other jounin use the regular shunshin, but that was really cool!

Sasuke mutters, "The Anbu use techniques like that." Naruto doesn't hear him.

"So what are we going to do today, sensei?" Naruto pesters him eagerly. "Are we gonna learn some new jutsu? Or go on a mission?"

"I'm going to test your proficiency with basic ninja skills," says Yamato, and his three little genin students pout and groan and 'tch' and protest, "We already _graduated_ from the academy, sensei, we're all pro... profi... we all know how to do basic stuff!"

"Some of us better than us," Sasuke says under his breath. Again, his words fail to reach Naruto's ears.

Yamato folds his arms. "It's not that I don't trust your academy teachers; I want to assess your abilities for myself. I want all of you to show me what you can do when it comes to real combat against another shinobi."

"Another shinobi?" Naruto echoes. "Are we going to fight each other?" He glances at Sasuke as he says this, and his fists tighten a little. What he wouldn't give to knock the _look_ off Sasuke's face in front of their new sensei-

"No. You're going to fight me."

Leaves rustle in the breeze somewhere to the west; a bird chirps and flies away.

"Eh?" Team Seven says in unison.

~

In the end, despite Sakura's immediate prediction, none of the freshly minted genin die during their first training exercise.

They do, however, all have quite a few more injuries than they started with - small, patchy bruises from Yamato's ridiculously fast blocks and sharp punches, larger blotches where elbows from teammates had collided 'accidentally' and sent them toppling into the mud for Naruto and Sasuke, and numerous minor grazes from deflected kunai knives.

They are all also out of breath, doubled over panting as Yamato proclaims them satisfactory and informs them that he can see where their strengths and weaknesses are now. "You'll have to work on your teamwork before we get assigned to a mission, though," he says, frowning.

Naruto perks up, even though he's still clutching his tender stomach as if to protect it from more of Sasuke's elbowing. "A mission?"

"Not with _you_ on the team, dead last," Sasuke grunts. It's not as quiet as he'd intended, and Naruto whirls to face him with a furious look on his battered face, puffing himself up to deliver a nasty tongue-lashing backed up by fists if necessary.

"You two," a dead-sounding voice says.

Naruto and Sasuke's heads turn towards the voice reflexively, as does Sakura's; the latter lets out a shriek at the sight of Yamato's _face_ , suddenly half-lit by an invisible source somewhere beneath his masked chin and looking like an exhibit in a haunted house.

Naruto screams higher than Sakura. Sasuke turns very, very pale.

"You really need to learn to get along," Yamato tells them, staring directly at them with his black hole eyes, and then disappears with a quiet sound into the earth.

~

"What's your distance from the target?"

"Five metres. I'm ready!"

"So am I," Sasuke whispers into his headset. Sakura's "me too!" crackles and hisses through a moment later, followed by a short pause.

"Go," Yamato-sensei says.

Sasuke bursts out from behind the tree he's been positioned behind for the past two minutes, noting Naruto leap from another tree to the east and Sakura emerge from a bush. They all wear intense, focused facial expressions; all of their attention is directed towards the mission target.

Three breaths from the tree, Naruto dives and flings his arms around said target, screeching "I got it!" triumphantly, promptly following it up with more screaming when it - a large, grey cat - digs its claws ferociously into his arms.

The radio hisses again. "Confirmed ribbon on the right ear?"

"Confirmed," Sasuke relays back. He turns to Naruto, and is unexpectedly confronted with a faceful of very pissed-off cat wriggling its way out of his teammate's arms. "Wait, Naruto-"

"Aaaaargh!"

"It's getting away again! Sasuke, catch it!"

Sasuke can't, because the cat's successful escape from Naruto's grasp had involved using his face as a landing zone. Luckily, however, he doesn't have to - the vague shimmer of a shunshin jutsu appears in the air in front of them, preceding the appearance of their sensei leaning forward to hold out something protruding from his finger.

The team watch as the cat stops short to look at the thing. It sniffs it once, twice, and meows curiously. "That's it," Yamato says to it, offering it the - plant? definitely a plant. Extending directly from their sensei's finger. Sasuke's never seen a jutsu like _that_ before.

Quicker than the cat can react, Yamato grabs it and pulls it into his arms. It protests, but is unable to get free again and settles for meowing sulkily at the other three. Yamato-sensei nods at them and says, "Mission accomplished."

Naruto breathes a huge sigh of relief and begins to brush himself off.

Sasuke - and Sakura, he notices - stare at the sprout of catnip disappearing back into Yamato's finger as if it had never been there at all.

~

Unlike his teammates, Naruto doesn't wonder about his sensei's weird plant creation abilities one bit over the next day. He has much more important things to worry about, like his first C-rank mission! Sure, their client seems kind of lame, but still, a C-rank mission! and Iruka-sensei even went along with it!

He's in high spirits when they leave the village; bar a single death threat to Tazuna which is quickly quelled by Yamato's creepy face, Naruto has nothing but happy things to natter about - and natter he does. Sakura asks the bridge-builder a few questions about where he comes from, and Yamato chimes in with an explanation of the five nations and their hidden villages and other very boring-but-essential things, but otherwise it's Naruto's cheerful voice in everybody's ears for a few hours walking.

In fact, he's so busy talking that he doesn't notice the silent Sasuke and Yamato growing tenser and tenser as they approach the dock from which they're intended to take a boat the rest of the way into Wave Country.

Thus, it happens far faster than he can see - chains wrapping around Yamato, who turns out to be nothing but a wooden dummy and reappears behind a black-cloaked ninja who has emerged from no-where, knocking his feet out from under him and flinging him straight into a tree and unconsciousness. The other one goes for Tazuna, but Sakura gets in his way and Sasuke - _Sasuke_ \- sends a wave of shuriken right at him.

The ninja dodges. He lets out a huff, says something like "kid-", and then Yamato's fist impacts with his skull from the side and the chain from before pins his arms to his side with some swift improvisation from Sasuke.

Naruto stares.

"Good work, Sasuke, Sakura," Yamato says.

Sasuke grunts. Sakura says, "Thanks, sensei," in a shaky voice and nearly drops her kunai, fumbling to put it away with equally shaky hands.

"Woah," Naruto says and then blanches when his brain catches up with his body. His fists clench - dammit, he didn't do anything! His first C-rank mission and he froze. And there's Sasuke standing there like he's so _cool_ ; he even got in front of Sakura and saved her.

He's still fuming when Sasuke looks over and asks, while Yamato ties up the two enemy ninja, "Are you okay, _scaredy-cat_?"

" _Hey_ ," Naruto starts to yell.

"Naruto," Yamato says. Naruto clamps his mouth shut, though with something of a sulky tilt to it, because he doesn't want to get the scary face again. Yamato's gotten really fond of that since he figured out how effective it is on all of them. But especially Naruto.

One of the unconscious ninja stirs. Everybody's attention turns to the two tied-together enemies; Naruto palms a kunai, determined not to be left out this time if they escape, but all the man does is groan and croak out, "How'd you notice us?"

"It doesn't matter," Yamato-sensei says tersely. His hands snap to his hips. "You two are chuunin from the Hidden Mist, correct?"

The Mist-nin groans again in an affirmative manner.

"Who was your target?"

A snort this time, rather than a groan. "The bridge-builder."

Naruto's not sure he understands why ninja from another village would be hunting a _bridge-builder_ , of all people, but Yamato-sensei looks very, very pissed-off all of a sudden. "Care to explain, Tazuna?"

The old man looks kinda scared, which Naruto does understand. "I - uh-"

"We were contracted for a simple protection mission. Bandits, thieves, not enemy shinobi. This is now a B-rank mission or above, which I'm not prepared to undertake with a squad of inexperienced genin. I think it's best if we all return to the village and sort this out."

Return to the village? "We can't!" Naruto exclaims. Not his C-rank - after he didn't even get to _fight_ \- "Yamato-sensei, we gotta continue the mission! We can handle this."

"You absolutely cannot, Naruto."

"But, sensei-" Naruto turns to his teammates with a pleading expression, and for once in his life, is rewarded by Sakura jumping to his aid. "We're already halfway to Wave, sensei. Wouldn't it just waste time to go back to the village?"

"Please," Tazuna adds, blanching when Yamato turns stern eyes on him. "I'm sorry I lied to you, but I - Wave Country has no money to hire ninja for a more expensive mission. If you leave now, I'm dead."

"And they could still attack us on the way back to the village," Sasuke points out, though he doesn't sound like he really cares. Naruto crinkles his nose at him.

Their sensei raises his hand to his temple and massages, the lines around his eyes deepening like old man Teuchi's - only Teuchi's are from smiling. "Alright," he says finally. "But I expect all of you to stay close to me and listen to everything I say. Especially you, Naruto."

"Right," Naruto says, restraining a celebratory whoop. The C-rank is still on!

~

The team stumble onto the boat in single file - "So it doesn't tip over," their rower says - and Sakura takes a seat between Naruto and Sasuke while Yamato-sensei conducts a short, concise interrogation of Tazuna for the details he'd left out of his original mission description.

"Gatou," Tazuna explains nervously as they row. "The bridge connects the Land of Waves to the mainland and opens up new trade routes, so-"

Sakura tunes out after she picks up the gist of what he's saying; the skeletal bridge itself has just come in sight through the thick mist surrounding their boat. "Wow," she says. Naruto echoes her sentiments. Sasuke, as usual, doesn't seem to be affected by the spectacle.

Disembarkation comes an hour or so later, the rower taking their ryo and disappearing back into the fog. Sakura stretches her slightly cramping legs and follows their sensei's lead towards the well-trodden, heavily forested path. She can see Naruto and Sasuke shooting each other little glances tinged with hostility out of the corner of her eye, but keeps her own eyes to the horizon. Well, maybe just a little peek at Sasuke's handsome profile-

"There!" Naruto screams.

Sakura jumps, as does the rest of the team.

Unlike what's come to be usual in the past couple of weeks, Yamato-sensei waits until Naruto finishes his overblown pantomime of 'checking the area' to give him a quick stern "Naruto," which is how Sakura guesses that something has to be up. Sensei looks on edge - "But when doesn't he look on edge?" a cranky voice at the back of her mind quips.

"Stop," Sakura yells when Naruto tries flinging more shuriken into a bush a few more steps down the trail, nearly hitting a poor white rabbit. "Naruto, you're being _embarrassing_."

"Sorry," Naruto says, though it's directed more towards the rabbit. "See, there was something there," he throws across at the rest of the group. He sounds far too proud of himself, Sakura thinks sourly. It's just a rabbit. Sasuke nearly got an enemy shinobi earlier.

And then, before she can start to tear into Naruto good, Yamato yells " _Get down_!" and a body crashes into her.

A whirl of movement passes before Sakura's eyes - something slicing through the air where she had been. She gasps, partly from having the wind knocked out of her by - oh. Naruto. Naruto's on top of her. Sakura yelps and shoves him off her violently and gets to her feet quickly. And blinks.

The thing which passed over them, she realises immediately, was a sword. Long and wide enough to have sliced their entire group in half if they hadn't taken cover. It's embedded in a tree, and there's a man standing on it with his back to him. An enemy?

She reaches for her kunai, seeing Naruto start forward too, but Yamato steps between them with a warning look. "You're Zabuza Momochi," he addresses the man on the tree, to Sakura's surprise. Does he know him?

Sasuke says, "He looks dangerous," in a low voice.

"He is," Yamato replies sharply. "A missing-nin originally from the Hidden Mist village, known as 'the Demon' of that place. You would need years more training before you could hope to take him on."

The man on the tree - the man on the _sword_ on the tree - snorts. "You seem to have me at a disadvantage," he comments. His voice is rough and gravelly and carries an overpowering current of menace in its tone; Sakura grips the hilt of her kunai harder at the sound of it. "You know who I am, but I don't know you from any other Leaf village grunt."

"My name is Yamato," Yamato-sensei says.

Zabuza Momochi, Demon of the Hidden Mist, doesn't look very impressed.

"And i'm Naruto Uzumaki," Naruto adds unprompted. One of Yamato's hands twitches in Sakura's peripheral vision.

A 'tch', like the ones Sasuke gives at every other order Yamato-sensei hands out, spits its way out of Zabuza's mouth, followed by a chuckle. "Naruto Uzumaki. Well, at least you got to tell me your names before you die."

Sakura blinks, and Zabuza and the sword are gone, though the air still feels cold and heavy. The chill is increasing by the second, In fact. she looks around for Zabuza; the path begins to blur in the distance, covered by a white mist thicker than the one they'd passed through on the way here. "Is this a jutsu?" she asks nervously.

"Yes." Yamato-sensei motions them back again. "All of you, surround Tazuna. Protect him with your lives. I'll handle this."

The mist swirls around them.

"Sensei," Sakura hears Sasuke say, strained and quiet, and something spikes in the pit of her stomach. Sasuke never sounds like that. But they're facing a jounin-level shinobi - a missing-nin - the _Demon_ of the Hidden Mist - what hope do they have? And her body feels so heavy, burdened down by the mist-

"Don't worry," Yamato-sensei says. The words ring out through the damp air, dissolving the heaviness on Sakura's shoulders. "You three are as much my responsibility as much as Tazuna is. I won't let any of you die here."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Zabuza growls from somewhere behind Sakura's right ear.

Sakura gasps in horror and whirls, nearly dropping her kunai again in a rush to face their enemy and his massive blade. She barely has time to spot similar expressions of shock and terror on Naruto and Sasuke's faces - _how did he get between them and Tazuna?_ \- before Zabuza hefts his sword and swings it in one fluid movement towards their sensei.

The ground begins to rumble underneath their feet, and all the research Sakura did just last week, combing the library to try and answer the question of 'what kind of ninjutsu can create plants from nothing?', comes flooding back into her head as thick brown tendrils of wood erupt from the earth. They circle Zabuza swiftly, wrapping around his arms and torso and stopping his swing an inch from Yamato-sensei's unnervingly calm face.

"What?" Zabuza snaps, before dissolving into a large puddle of water that hits the ground and splashes Sakura's bare toes.

"Clone!" Naruto shouts and throws a kunai past Sakura's field of vision. She spins back around, in time to see it hit the sword of the real Zabuza, standing a few metres away from them. He's staring at them; no, staring at Yamato.

Sakura wouldn't call herself an expert in reading feelings, especially the feelings of an extremely dangerous killer with half his face covered in bandages, but she thinks Zabuza looks kind of unsettled.

He sounds fine enough, however, when he laughs at them and says, "Huh. You know, I heard rumours back when I was part of the Mist assassination squad, that the Hidden Leaf had someone who could use the jutsu of their first Hokage. I never thought it was true."

 _The jutsu of the First Hokage_. Sakura glances at their sensei, whose face is still steely calm.

"It won't be enough to stop me, though," Zabuza adds, and rushes forward again. Yamato-sensei steps out to meet him; for a moment Sakura thinks he's about to try and stop the sword's iminent attack with just his arm, but he makes a swift hand-sign and dark wood spreads from his fingers into a sturdy shield just before the strike smashes into him.

A heavy thud sounds out. Yamato-sensei goes flying backwards, almost barrelling into Tazuna, whose hand Sakura grabs and tugs out of the way on instinct. Sasuke and Naruto stumble back as well. The giant sword comes down into the earth like a barrier between them and Zabuza is _right there_ again. He sneers at the four of them and wrenches his sword up for another swing; Sakura makes to throw her kunai at him, but there's nothing in her hand. She stares blankly and realises that she must have dropped it to drag Tazuna out of the way - and now she has nothing to defend herself with.

Zabuza grins at her. "Pathetic," he says. "You call yourself ninja? You aren't _true_ ninja until you've brushed with death more times than this and survived. But you brats aren't even going to live through your first fight."

Sakura swallows. She wants to look away, see if Yamato-sensei is getting up, but she can't. She can't break her gaze away from Zabuza.

"Hey!"

The yell draws the missing-nin's eyes away from her instead, towards Naruto and Sasuke. "Hey!" Naruto repeats furiously. He makes a sign that she recognises from their first training session and a bunch of other Narutos appear behind and beside him. Sasuke pulls a handful of shuriken from his thigh pouch, too.

"Shadow clones, huh," Zabuza says, and swings his sword wide at the both of them. Two Narutos disappear in small puffs of smoke as the blade passes through them; three more duck under it and run at Zabuza. He fends them off with a few quick kicks and brings his sword up for yet another attack. The sword's path circles behind him, and Sakura has to duck to avoid its tip, shoving back Tazuna - still sitting in a dazed and terrified heap behind her - with her. As she moves, she sees something glint on the path: her dropped kunai.

A quintet of clones makes another push at Zabuza, backed by a flurry of Sasuke's shuriken. He dodges the shuriken and bursts half the clones with a swish of his sword, but one launches itself at his torso and rams him in the stomach before vanishing, making him stumble for just an instant - and then Naruto yells, "Sasuke!" urgently and Sakura watches as Sasuke flings a head-sized fuuma shuriken at Zabuza and it _connects_.

Naruto lets out a triumphant whoop as the last of his clones leaps up to clobber the staggered Zabuza in the head. Just before it hits, however, he vanishes, and the clone slams into the ground with a "huh?!" and puffs away. The air in front of Sasuke and Naruto flickers; Zabuza reappears out of the mist, his eyes wide with rage.

Without even thinking, Sakura dives for her kunai, fumbling it once in horror as the missing-nin advances on her teammates, and hurls it at the back of Zabuza's head.

It nicks the bandages wound around his face; Zabuza grunts and turns and suddenly, to Sakura's immense relief, there's someone else between her and him, thrusting out his arm - or rather, something protruding from his arm, faster than his target can move.

Zabuza glances down at the wooden spike stuck through his shoulder in angry disbelief for a moment before Yamato's wood-padded fist hits his face, jerking his body off the spike forcefully and sending it through the air to crash away from the five of them.

The mist thickens and then begins to dissipate. When it clears, Zabuza is gone, but Sakura could've sworn she saw the outline of another shorter figure next to him through the fog for a moment.


	2. knocking on a stone bridge before crossing it (2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it took me way, way too long to write this but here it is.. the second part of wave arc. i'm planning out the next arc atm but i have a lot of stuff coming up irl soon so uh expect slow/infrequent updates (as always).. you can always talk to me about this au on tumblr or twitter tho ! (aerynlallaboso on both)

They trek to Tazuna's home in relative silence, broken only by the shaken bridge-builder asking if they're safe. "For now," Yamato-sensei says. "I wounded Zabuza. I don't think he'll attack again until he's at full strength, now that he knows what he's up against."

Tazuna chuckles nervously. "Yes, those were some impressive skills."

"Yeah, sensei! What was that jutsu you used?" Naruto pipes up excitedly. "Zabuza said only the First Hokage had those jutsus!"

"Later, Naruto."

'Later', to the dismay of the impatient Naruto, takes quite a few hours; Tazuna's family greets them when they reach their destination - Naruto forms an instant dislike of his grandson in particular - and it's late afternoon by the time Yamato-sensei takes the three of them out to a small clearing surrounded by trees to talk to them away from their client.

"First," he begins. "I'm sorry."

His genin look at him in surprise.

"I underestimated Zabuza's strength, and you nearly got hurt. But you all did well. Naruto and Sasuke's teamwork has improved, especially-"

Sasuke hmphs.

"And Sakura showed good instincts. She protected our client, even if she dropped her weapon."

Sakura flushes with embarrassment; Naruto glares at Yamato and says, "Don't pick on her, sensei!" but Sakura waves him away. "It's okay," she says in a small voice. "I - I did drop it."

"I'm not trying to be mean, Naruto," Yamato says, scratching his head awkwardly. Naruto hmphs at him, mirroring Sasuke, and then perks up when he remembers - "About your jutsu, sensei-"

"Yeah," Sasuke and Sakura say together. Sakura goes pink, like she always does when Sasuke does... _anything_ , in Naruto's experience. He doesn't really see what's so great about the guy, personally. Sure they'd worked well together taking on Zabuza but that was - the heat of the moment. Adrenaline. Chemicals or something. Naruto hadn't been listening very closely in that class.

Yamato-sensei folds his arms. "The jutsu I use is the First Hokage's wood style," he says.

Naruto's excitement spikes - their sensei has that much power? "Wow!" he exclaims, punching the air for emphasis. "That's so cool!"

"How?" Sasuke demands. "I thought those techniques were unique to the First Hokage."

For a moment, Naruto thinks Yamato isn't going to tell them: his eyes narrow and he gets that look on his face, like the Third does when he has something he's not supposed to let Naruto know, but finally he sighs and says, "I was implanted with the cells of the First Hokage when I was younger than you are, giving me the ability to use his wood style ninjutsu, although not as well as he could."

Even Sasuke's eyes go wide and round as saucers at that.

"Now," Yamato continues. "Training."

After a short review of Chakra 101 which Naruto swears Iruka-sensei _totally_ didn't teach them, despite evidence to the contrary from his teammates, and a quick bathroom break - "It's been _hours_ , Sasuke, don't act like you don't need to go too!" - Yamato finally outlines their training, with a quick demonstration.

"This is what you'll be doing," he tells them, hanging upside down off a tree branch. His arms are still folded. "Since it seems your academy teachers didn't get that far with their curriculum."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Naruto yells up at him.

"With chakra, Naruto."

"Wha - you mean that's not a wood style thing? I thought you could just walk up trees because you could control the wood or somethin'."

Yamato sighs and smiles, just a little, and runs through the correct method for gathering up chakra into one's feet and using it to climb trees hands-less before setting them loose to try it themselves. Of course, their first attempts aren't exactly perfect, but they start to get the hang of it fairly quickly.

In fact, Naruto's only on his second try when Sakura makes it all the way up the tree with a cheer. He stares forlornly at her when Yamato-sensei takes her aside to try some more advanced chakra control training - "Water?" he hears her saying excitedly before they disappear - and then turns a glare on Sasuke, his remaining competition. He's gotta start getting better quickly if he wants to catch up to that bastard!

~

The days quickly settle into a rhythm for Sasuke: up at the crack of dawn, eating a quick breakfast prepared by one of their hosts, then either reporting for protection duty with Tazuna or racing Naruto out to his notch-riddled tree for a long day of training. It's frustrating, on several levels, to figure out the balance of chakra vs momentum to reach the top by trial and error, but it's also immensely satisfying to return after a day of tailing Tazuna to see Naruto's kunai marks several feet below his still.

Yamato-sensei watches them, mostly. Sakura also joins them a few more times before returning to her 'advanced training', which Sasuke quickly surmises is learning how to water-walk after she comes in to evening meal soaked through. It irks him somewhat that he isn't skilled enough to move up to the better training; on the other hand, it serves as motivation for him to master tree-climbing, since Naruto isn't much of a rival.

Until he comes back on the fifth day and sees Naruto's notches edging closer and closer to his, that is.

"Sakura gave me some tips," Naruto announces happily.

Sasuke glares at the ground, as if it's the earth's fault he didn't think of asking Sakura for advice - with good reason, really, because all she'd do would be squeal and blush - and now he has to ask _Naruto_. The indignity.

"What," he says. Naruto squints at him and he flushes with embarrassment, but soldiers on. "What did Sakura tell you?"

Naruto's eyes widen, and his whole face cracks into a smug grin. "It's a secret!"

So much for that, Sasuke thinks disgustedly, suppressing the temptation to throw his kunai at Naruto's _face_. He's just thankful Yamato isn't around; he's probably off watching Tazuna or overseeing Sakura.

"Sasuke."

Sasuke freezes.

"If you need help, I can-"

"No," Sasuke snaps, cutting off the sensei who just emerged from a tree somewhere behind him. Yamato shrugs, but doesn't ask again, and Sasuke is pleased when his next run up the tree carries him a good deal further than before.

It takes him three more days to reach the top, after sitting through the story behind Tazuna's son-in-law's demise and nearly dropping Naruto directly onto Sakura after rescuing him from a nasty fall. The fact that he got there himself makes it easier to bear Naruto clambering onto an adjacent perch about five minutes later; Sasuke even grins at him, forgetting his antagonism in the heat of the moment.

Their success at training, however, doesn't prepare them for the next morning.

~

Naruto is dead to the world when they head out bright and early - "Best leave him to sleep off the chakra drain," Yamato says - and at first Sasuke's glad that he'll have the opportunity to train alone for a while, without that noisy troublemaker to bother him.

Then they reach the bridge with Tazuna and find a pile of dead workers strewn across several metres of stone, and he briefly reconsiders the utility of having another teammate to back him up. Though Naruto might just get in his way instead.

"Zabuza," he says under his breath as mist begins to drift across the bridge.

As if summoned, the man himself appears, shrouded in the mist and looking like an evil spirit. There's someone else next to him too; Sasuke thinks at first it's a clone or the body of a worker, propped up for show, but the fog parts for a moment and he glimpses an oval, teal-marked mask and senbon balanced between fingers in preparation for a strike.

"I knew it," Sakura breathes. "I knew I saw another person last time, sensei."

A deep, nasty laugh hits their ears. "The brats again?" Zabuza sneers. "This shouldn't take too long. one of them's even shaking."

With a start, Sasuke realises that Zabuza means him. Every muscle in his body is tense; he's shaking from pure anticipation. "If you think I'm afraid of you, you're wrong," he calls to the missing-nin, who laughs again and flips up a hand sign.

Four Zabuzas flicker into existence around them. Sasuke pulls out a second kunai and looks at his sensei.

Yamato nods. Sasuke moves - the clones twitch one by one as knives rip through them in one clean, fluid slicing motion, leaving behind puddles of water.

"Hmm," Zabuza says. "He's gotten better. An impressive kid, don't you think, Haku?"

The masked person nods their agreement. They seem to be looking directly at Sasuke, sizing him up - they're going to be the one to fight him, Sasuke decides. "I'll take care of that one," he states.

"Be careful," Yamato warns him. Sakura adds something he doesn't care to listen to - probably "You're so cool, Sasuke!!" like always - as he surges forward to meet the masked person, kunai in hand. He dimly hears Yamato telling the other two to get back before the person reaches him, blocking the knife with one of their senbon.

The masked person - what did Zabuza call them? Haku? - begins, "I don't want to kill you," and Sasuke snorts. "Don't be foolish," he retorts, throwing his weight against Haku's block.

"You won't be able to keep up with my speed the next time. And I've already gained two advantages," Haku informs him. Their tone of voice is calm and steady, reminding Sasuke of Yamato-sensei, and the mask: it looks like that of an Anbu. He wonders - but he doesn't have time to finish his thought before Haku's hand begins to move. _One hand_ -

The puddles of water left from his earlier dispatching of the water clones erupts into a whirlwind of thin needles, pointing themselves directly at Sasuke. He can tell that Haku is right, and he won't be able to dodge them at his ordinary speed, but all that training the past few days hasn't been for nothing.

He concentrates, feeling the warm tingling of chakra flowing and gathering in his legs, and dashes backwards at tremendous speed. The needles hit the ground and explode into a shower of water; Sasuke flings a handful of shuriken at the rapidly retreating Haku to lead them along a path he can follow and dashes again, forward this time, until Haku backs right into him. He disables them with a few short moves and sends them hurtling towards Zabuza.

"Looks like I have the advantage in speed," Sasuke says smugly.

Zabuza grunts, and glances at his comrade, who is swiftly recovering from their thrashing. "Haku," he growls. "At this rate, they're going to beat us off."

The air begins to cool rapidly; the temperature decreasing even quicker than when Zabuza's hidden mist jutsu took effect. A white aura begins to rise from Haku's body as they reply, "Indeed," and make a handsign.

At first, Sasuke thinks Haku's trying to repurpose the water from their earlier jutsu into yet another water attack, but as it rises this time, it flattens, solidifies. It _freezes_. "No way," Sasuke says, watching in apprehension as the ice smoothes itself into reflective mirrors. He's never seen a jutsu like this - another infuriating gap in his knowledge. He needs to know as much as he can if he's ever going to defeat-

No. He has to focus on the battle at hand. _Focus_ , Sasuke tells himself.

The mirrors flicker; an image of Haku appears on every one, staring at Sasuke with that blank mask. "Shall we begin?"

However focused he is, Sasuke isn't prepared for the hail of needles that rain down on him from every direction the moment he braces. Pain spikes from every inch of his skin; they're too fast, blindingly fast. A needle skims across his forehead, leaving a line of blood that trickles into his eyes and obscures his vision. He winces and tries to cover his head frantically.

The needles stop, briefly, with the sound of a kunai being deflected - and then the sound of a shuriken hitting its target. Sasuke looks up from his crouch to see Haku lying prone, cheek against the bridge, and a huge puff of smoke surrounding a small figure a few metres outside the ring of ice mirrors.

 _Naruto_ , he thinks, surprised to find himself relieved.

~

"Sensei," Sakura asks, after Haku deflects her kunai with a simple twist of their senbon. "Those ice mirrors? What are they are?"

"A kekkei genkei," Yamato replies. He's looking straight at Zabuza as he says it, waiting for him to confirm.

Zabuza laughs.

First an extremely dangerous missing-nin, now an equally dangerous child with an unknown kekkei genkei. This entire situation is spinning wildly out of Yamato's control. He might've been able to handle this more easily while he was Anbu, with a team of highly trained shinobi with no hesitation in delivering a killing blow, but with three _children_ \- whose safety he is responsible for - he has no room for error.

"Kekkei.. genkei?"

"A jutsu passed down by blood, usually within a clan lineage. Like the Hyuga Byakugan."

He can see Sasuke and Naruto - who has apparently decided to hop inside the ice mirrors with his teammate - moving. A scorching smell fills the air for a few moments, then vanishes. Sasuke's fire jutsu aren't enough to melt the ice, it seems.

Haku's voice drifts over from their small battleground - "I want to protect someone precious to me. to work for that person. To make that person's dreams come true. That is my dream," they're saying. "For that, I can become a shinobi. _I can kill you_."

Yamato grits his teeth. Zabuza grins. "Your brats won't be able to win," he says. "They aren't strong enough to steel their hearts and kill. _Real_ shinobi can't be created in a peaceful village like yours, because you can't gain the most important experience."

Sakura starts to say something, but Yamato's attention is caught by Zabuza's hands sliding to the hilt of his huge sword, moving almost faster than he can react to swing it around and slice through the air where Yamato and Sakura and Tazuna had been a few seconds earlier. It sticks in the hard stone of the bridge for an instant before Zabuza wrenches it out.

"I'll admit," Zabuza says, shifting his hands on the sword's grip. "I don't know everything your fancy wood jutsu can do. But I doubt however you got it made you as powerful as the God of Shinobi. And I still have the advantage," he adds. The bandages on his face shift, betraying the outline of a nasty grin. "With my silent killing technique."

Without warning, the air thickens drastically. Zabuza reaches for his sword and Yamato surges forward, making a handsign and sending a pointed branch straight at his opponent's arm. The missing-nin lurches to the side to avoid it, stepping right into Yamato's stab at his other arm. He snarls and pulls back; Yamato loses his grip on his kunai and it jerks away, still stuck in Zabuza's flesh.

Then Zabuza disappears again. His chakra is simply gone. Yamato's encountered ninjutsu capable of concealing chakra signatures many times before, but never without a sensor on his team, and he hasn't had a chance to put his own tracking method to work.

The uncertainty is disturbing. "Sakura," he says. "Stay alert. Stay close to Tazuna."

"Yes, sensei," comes the reply from behind him, followed by a sharp cry that sends a spike of _something_ rocketing up Yamato's spine. He turns in an instant, squinting to see through the mist - and sees Zabuza looking at him, Tazuna cowering in a heap and Sakura-

It must've been the flat of his blade that hit her, Yamato thinks numbly. He has shuriken in his hands before he can summon another conscious thought, which he flings at Zabuza not expecting them to hit. The missing-nin blocks them, sure enough; Yamato rushes him with another handsign and outstretched flood of thick wooden spikes.

He should've known Zabuza would go after the vulnerable target - he should've known he'd go after Tazuna and his _student_. Yamato presses Zabuza back with brute force, sending another flurry of shuriken at him to drive him away from the other two, only realising after a few moments that the man is speaking to him.

"You should be thankful," Zabuza sneers. "The girl's useless, and the Uzumaki whelp isn't any use either, without proper knowledge of his lineage. The other brat's quick, I'll grant you, but I've taught Haku well. I have a well-trained tool. Unlike the garbage you're working with."

"The other boy's name is Sasuke Uchiha," Yamato informs him. He stops short of another attack; Zabuza seems to have stopped as well. He's getting involved in his trash-talking.

"An Uchiha? I thought they were all dead. Without his Sharingan, he'll die just as quickly. Nobody has ever defeated Haku's jutsu."

The ice mirrors aren't visible through the mist, so Yamato has no way of knowing whether Zabuza's prediction is coming true. But the hunter-nin - _fake_ hunter-nin, if they're working with Zabuza - is likely very skilled, and Naruto and Sasuke, as far as they've come, are not.

"And even your jutsu has its limits," Zabuza continues. "Without room to maneuver, you're predictable." He sneers. "You can apologise to these brats in the next life for not being able to protect them."

It's true the lack of soil or foliage on the solid stone bridge gives him little to work with, and it costs him ever so slightly more chakra to stimulate his own cells to grow, but, well, Zabuza's miscalculated if he thinks Yamato's at his limit. It takes more than just earth to make trees grow.

"You assume the wood style is the only jutsu I have at my disposal," Yamato says. He makes a handsign, channelling as much chakra as he can and not taking his eyes off his enemy.

Before Zabuza can answer, a ripping torrent of water smashes against the bridge, cascading down onto him in a pincer shape and knocking him off his feet.

~

Sasuke registers Yamato's attack as a huge shaking in the ground underneath him. It jars up through his legs; the senbon sticking into him sting. "What was _that_?" Naruto yells.

Another needle flies from a mirror above Naruto. Sasuke dodges it. It's getting easier to see Haku's movements. He's not sure if he's adapting to the other ninja's pattern of attack, or if - if he can simply see better. Is this what having battle experience feels like?

"What was that?" Naruto repeats. He's been of no use at all since he got inside the mirrors. Unsurprising.

"Shut up," Sasuke tells him.

In the mirrors, Haku pauses their assault to peer at the two genin. Sasuke tenses. "You move well," Haku compliments him. "But-"

The 'but' is a signal. He can feel an attack coming afterward: he doesn't even need to hear what Haku's going to say next. He needs to concentrate, to push past the pain and ignore the blur of orange next to him and see through this attack.

Haku throws, straight at Naruto, and Sasuke _sees_.

The sudden rush of extra sensory input is mindblowing - he almost doesn't know what's happening to him for several seconds before he sees the silvery-blue threads of chakra running through the ice above his head and remembers his lessons on 'effects of the Sharingan'. Everything is sharper, clearer. There's a huge blue wash of chakra out beyond the ring of mirrors that's very distracting, and chakra caked around his own hands and feet - so much to see.

He lifts his head. Haku almost gasps. "You're... that's the kekkei genkei of the Uchiha," they say.

"Wha..? Aargh!" Naruto yelps, raising himself up to look at Sasuke. "Sasuke! Your eyes are all red! Hey, are you okay?"

Sasuke ignores him. His Sharingan can't be complete; it's missing the rush of focus his clanmates always spoke of before - before. But Haku's jutsu must take a lot to maintain, and if he's already able to see his attacks, then even this should be enough.

"I suppose I need to finish this quickly, then," Haku says, filling the spaces between their fingers with senbon again and launching an attack. They blur into a streak of teal and white flying out from the mirror, aiming at - Naruto again?

It's not what he expected. Sasuke's not sure he can get there in time. He's equally sure that there's no way Naruto can get out of the way in time; if Sasuke doesn't save him, then he's going to die. Whoever's in the way of that blur is getting hit with everything Haku has left.

His body moves on its own.

Haku's needles hit every pressure point he has, sending stabbing, burning pain through all of his nerves, and all Sasuke can do is grit his teeth and say, "All you ever do is get in the way...", and perhaps a few other things he can't quite remember later, before he falls back into Naruto's arms and his vision goes dark.

~

When Sakura wakes up, the fighting is nearly over.

Her eyes are blurry; her side is still stinging - she's going to have a huge black-and-blue bruise and her mother is going to _flip_ \- but she's strong enough to watch her sensei take out Zabuza with water and a wooden spike through the heart.

"Sasuke," she croaks. Tazuna shushes her and then Haku appears, flinging ice needles with a cold and merciless fury, which she dimly guesses answers her question.

There's a blinding flash of yellow and dark orange in her vision before she blacks out again. She hears shouting and screaming and the sound of Yamato-sensei's wood style jutsu being used again and briefly an inhuman howl that couldn't have been Naruto. Could it?

~

When _Sasuke_ wakes up, the fighting really is over. 

He huffs in pain as he sits up to survey the situation, searching for danger, but there isn't any - he can see bodies far across the bridge on his left. One wears a teal costume, and beside it is another body with a long, wide blade laid alongside it. They're dead, then?

"Sasuke!" a cry goes up. He starts. "Sasuke, hey!"

Naruto is approaching him at rapid speed, Tazuna behind him and Sakura and Yamato even further behind. Yamato's supporting Sakura with his arm. There's blood on her face, too, and all of them look as scuffed and dirtied as Sasuke imagines he is.

Looking down at his legs, he sighs and pulls out one of Haku's needles with a grimace.

~

"So," Naruto says. They're walking back to Tazuna's place, him and Sasuke reluctantly keeping each other standing. "Is that it, sensei?"

The scroll containing the sealed bodies of Zabuza and Haku bounces against Yamato's hip. "For now," he answers. Tazuna's grandson had managed to rally the village and come to their aid, driving off the unexpected horde of mercenaries who'd shown up with the equally unexpected Gato. Naruto had been the one to take care of _him_. Not that the kid remembers.

Yamato glances back at his students. "I'm sending a message back to the Leaf village requesting that a squad of chuunin take over this mission. I doubt there'll be any more trouble like the fight we just experienced, but it's better to be safe than sorry."

"Then we're going home?"

"In a few days, yes."

Naruto's pouting, a bit, but he doesn't seem to want to complain. Sasuke and Sakura just look exhausted, though the former has the energy to pipe up, "Sensei, there's something you should know."

"Mmm?"

"My Sharingan," Sasuke says.

Yamato's pace slows for a half-second. He hadn't thought - it's sooner than he'd been told to expect it. "Really. Well, we can talk more about that later."

"What's a Sharingan?" Naruto asks suspiciously, and then gasps. "Is that why your eyes were red? Do you have some kind of cool special powers? Hey, that's not fair!"

Sakura says, "I bet it's a kekkei genkei," sounding very smug. "I always knew you were way cooler than Naruto, Sasuke-"

"Hey!"

He doesn't even try to stop the bickering. It's almost comforting. A reminder that his tiny team of genin managed to make it through what amounted to an S-class mission alive and well and tentatively eager for more.

Yamato thinks he might be able to do this after all. But first - they have a lot more training to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case it wasn't clear? naruto went nine-tails (stage one) for long enough to kill gato and weaken haku enough for yamato to kill him before yamato calmed him down. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
